Someone Else
by Scouse
Summary: Why did all the pretty girls just want his gun? [SnikkiSana]


**Title: **Someone Else

**Rating:** PG-13

**Pairing:** Sawyer/Nikki, Sawyer/Ana-Lucia

**Summary:** Why the hell did all the pretty girls just want his gun?

**Warnings:** Spoilers up to Epsiode 14: Expose

**Status of Fic:** One Shot

**Author's Notes:** The first thing I've squeezed out of my writing glands in a long, long time. What with the events that happened to me at work just after christmas, an increased work-load now that one of my colleagues has left and every spare minute I get being focused upon finding a new job where I don't have to put up with people like those that I'm working with, I just haven't had the time to breathe, let alone anything else. But this is for me, trying to get my life back. A little wee bit of writing that's a little rusty but still there.

**Disclaimer:** Lost isn't mine.

**  
Someone Else.**

_"So put your arms around me,  
You let me believe that you are someone else…" - Texas, 'Put Your Arms Around Me'_

She had demanded a gun. Why the hell did all the pretty girls just want his gun?

Something fierce and fiery and altogether too familiar in her hazel eyes that sparked painful memories deep, deep in his chest. A dull, throbbing, aching memories like a tooth that needed pulling and wouldn't budge or the feeling right after some angry dunk landed a lucky punch in your gut harder than you'd expected or been prepared for.

The fact that she had ignited those memories was the reason that he had refused her order and goaded her further into their fight.

"Thanks for nothing!" she spat as she made to stride past him and that simple, bitter and yet in the same instance nonchalant comment, rather than making his remembrances fade away at the notion that she was leaving, only served to make his chest clench tighter at events to fresh to be forgotten and to raw to be remembered.

Someone else had treated him with the same fierceness, the same brash boldness, the same fearlessness when almost everyone of the other survivors dotted around the beach camp were too wary of him to utter more than a few clipped sentences in his direction, especially following his miraculous return from "Otherdom".

Perhaps it was the fire in her eyes that reminded him most of the darker pair that had once held that same look, the same glare. Perhaps it was the pursed lips, drawn into a thin, grim line that made his own eyes follow her movements as she stalked past and away from his shelter. Perhaps it was the set of her jaw, clenched in determination despite her defeat that made him stand from his comfortable seat in the sand, sending "Watership Down" crashing in a flutter of pages to the ground. Perhaps it was the sway of denim clad hips, moving in time with the image of a woman burned into his mind for the rest of all of his goddamn days, that made him clear his suddenly dry throat and call her back to him. And perhaps it was the way her lips were the first to make their move upon his own as the blue tarps of his tent doorway swished closed behind them as they stumbled under cover from the morning glare and all seeing eyes alike, echoing a previous encounter with another, that made his memories surge forwards unbridled from where he had kept them locked away since the funeral…

_Flashback_

The sun's hot fingertips danced across his face as he lay there, eyes closed against the glare lazily. If he kept his eyes closed then she would still think he was sleeping and they could stay there, in that clearing beside the stream just a little bit longer. She would stay in his arms that little bit longer. He was sure she only let him hold her like that because she thought he was sleeping. Didn't know that he was actually fully awake and relishing the notion that she wanted to feel his arms about her, that beneath her hard exterior and biting remarks, she did care for him somewhere deep down. Just a little.

His breathing must have given him away…or his heart beat kicking up a notch, beating like a drum beneath the tanned skin pulled taught across the chest that her ear lay against.

She drew away from him, sitting up straight and brushing a hand back through bedraggled and tangled ebony curls that bounced down around bare shoulders. She moved to stand up, retrieving her crumpled jeans with one hand and he caught the wrist of her other before she could escape from him fully.

"Leavin' so soon, Jungle Girl?" his voice rumbled in the hot air between them and she tossed him a carefully emotion-void glance back over her shoulder before she shrugged and stood, twisting out of his grasp.

Skin sliding across smooth skin…and then the contact was lost.

"'Fraid so, Cowboy." she chuckled, slipping into her tight jeans with practiced ease before turning back to face him, unashamed of her still semi-nakedness, in search of her black vest that he'd tossed away in the heat of the moment. Her eyes, dark and deep, locked with his, azure blue. Something flickered there, before she regained her composure once more. "Lighting doesn't strike the same place twice."

She snatched up her vest top and turned her back to him and his eyes followed her movements still. Regretfully and yet understanding of the way she was, the way they both were.

Her eyes flashed again over her should as the black coated her bronze skin and this time she had managed to replace the irritation that their encounter had dampened.

"What?" she snapped.

And Sawyer smirked, meeting her trademark impatience with his trademark sarcasm.

His teeth flashed white and dimples deepened in a wider grin than before.

"Don't you want my phone number?"

End Flashback

-oOo-  
Her breath came in soft, warm, some how reassuring puffs against his skin as she pressed her face there, right where his neck met his shoulder, just below his jaw line, and he allowed her to stay like that despite all his better judgement. Despite the conman in him still clamouring to claw his way out, telling him to re-adopt his "love 'em and leave 'em" mantra that had worked so well for him for so many years prior to the island.

But he was reluctant to move, for if he closed his eyes tightly enough he could let his mind skip back those scant few days to when he had laid in the jungle like this with someone else. If he tried hard enough he could pretend that Nikki was that someone else and that she was alive and well and the pain, the tightness in his chest lessened somewhat.

His arm curved around her shoulders and down her naked back, hand drawing lazy circles upon the smooth skin at the base of her spine and she allowed him to, allowed him to hold her to him despite the fact that she had somewhere else she needed to be. Despite the face that she needed to find her husband, not that he had acted anything like her husband for a while now. The husband who was probably out there looking for her.

But she was reluctant to move, for if she closed her eyes tight enough she could imagine that she was lying where she should be. In the arms of Paulo. She could imagine that they were right back at the beginning. Before Sydney and everything got complicated…back when their love was the only thing that they needed to see them through, not money, nor fame, nor an old man's fortune.

Finally though, when the arm that she had currently tucked beneath her head began to tingle and feel numb, she shifted slightly, feeling the balmy breeze sneak it's way beneath the shelter's cover and skim across them, entwined together, cooling their heated skin and calming racing hearts.

She cleared her throat suddenly, feeling it sticking together almost

"What'sa matter, Blondie?" Sawyer hummed, a deep rumble in his chest and she shifted again, eyes still closed as she brought her hand up to smooth tickling strands of her own hair from her face before resting her palm upon his chest.

She was silent for a few long minutes more before she continued.

"You called me Ana."

His chest rose as he sucked in a deep breath and held it until Nikki squinted open one green eye and looked up at him, his eyes still closed and yet squeezed tighter together than before.

"Ana…wasn't she that girl from the tail section of the plane who died in the hatch?" she continued, pressing the issue when she sensed his reluctance to speak. He'd called her the girls name for a reason, not that it particularly bothered her, actually she'd always found role playing during sex quite hot, but Paulo had never been very comfortable with the idea, but she sensed an underlying pain beneath Sawyer's usually untouchable exterior of southern charm. The way that his hand clenched into a stone hard fist and dug near painfully into the small of her back was a dead give away.

Nikki propped her head up onto her hand so that she could stare at his scrunched up face more intently.

"Slip of the tongue, Sweetheart. S'nothin'." he responded a little too nonchalantly for it to be entirely believable.

"Ana-Lucia…" she spoke the name again, noticing as the skin about his mouth, pressed now into one thin, dour line, pulled a little tighter, as if he were clenching his teeth behind their cover. "Was she your girlfriend of something?"

That drew his blue eyes open and angrily to her features as she lay there, on her front now, with her chin cupped in her hands, legs bent at the knees and crossed at the ankles in the air behind her. And for some reason he couldn't keep up the anger. Perhaps over whelmed still by the sadness that Ana's death obviously provoked in him.

Instead he turned his gaze away with a sigh.

"Nah." he muttered, sitting up, resting elbows upon his drawn up knees. "She didn't like me all that much…"

"She dragged you back here to save you." Nikki pointed out barely before he'd finished speaking. "She must have liked you some."

But Sawyer shook his head, dirty blonde locks whipping out in the air around his slim, suddenly dimple-free face.

"She woulda left me there. She said she would…and I don't really blame her none. I was a pain in her ass." he snorted bitterly at himself and actions that only he knew had occurred over on the other side of the island.

"You're right." Nikki stated again almost immediately, smirk drawing her own lips up at the corner. "She mustn't have liked you…" Sawyer's embittered snort turned into an equally embittered smile at the fact that he was right and she was agreeing with him but Nikki only shook her head and continued. "She must've loved you to put up with you for so long, dragging you back here when she could have, should have left you. No two ways about it. I know what I'm talking about, Sawyer." she struggled to sit back on her knees, searching for her clothes and tugging them on, much as Ana had that fateful day in the jungle.

"Yeah," he sneered sarcastically. "You sure know about true love an' all, cheatin' on your husband…"

Nikki tossed her hair out of her eyes and stood up straight, shrugging in the blasé manner that Sawyer had feigned, not all that well, before when she had spoken about Ana-Lucia.

"We were in love once…" she responded with another shrug, turning to leave but Sawyer's hand lashed out, catching her about her wrist and dragging her backwards slightly. "What?"

Blue eyes met amber and he narrowed his gaze, free hand snaking around her waist until he reached the band of her jean shorts and the edge of her colourful top. Deft fingers slipped beneath the hems of both until they met with the cold metal of the butt of his gun and his smile broke out wider than before dimples and pearly whites returning tenfold.

"Sneaky, Pick-Pocket Barbie." he chuckled retrieving the weapon and waving it tauntingly before her face. "Shame I already seen this trick once before…and ain't no way in hell I'm makin' the same mistake twice."

A third shrug wound it's way down Nikki's slender shoulders and she smiled back down at him, twisting her wrist from his grasp and slipping out between the blue plastic sheets that constituted his doorway.

"It was worth a try."

"It sure was."

-oOo- 


End file.
